Binge-Reading Ms. Klein

I haven't slept well the last couple of nights, and have devoted the otherwise wasted time to an attempt to finish Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine before I turn 67 years old tomorrow. In sheer number of pages, I have not that far to go, but the entire book is truly depressing reading, and it is so packed full of information and examples that one gets the most out of it by reading every word. And of course Ms. Klein, of necessity, takes the reader back to the George W. Bush presidency, which was IMNSHO even worse than the Obama era. Ah, well; I have plenty of good, cheap wine on hand, and an undeniably good book, to see me through the evening...

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AFTERTHOUGHT: let me clarify. Obama has been disappointing to me, while GeeDubya and crew were utterly disgusting. Got it?

Ms. Klein On Shocks, Mass Privatization, The Second Wave Of Colonialism, Neoliberalism And The Role Of The US

From Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, pp. 244-5:

...

The regimes that imposed mass privatization on Argentina and Bolivia were both held up in Washington as examples of how shock therapy could be imposed peacefully and democratically, without coups or repression. Although it's true that they did not begin in a hail of gunfire, it is surely significant that both ended in one.

In much of the Southern Hemisphere, neoliberalism is frequently spoken of as "the second colonial pillage": in the first pillage, the riches were seized from the land, and in the second they were stripped from the state. After every one of these profit frenzies come the promises: next time, there will be firm laws in place before a country's assets are sold off, and the entire process will be watched over by eagle-eyed regulators and investigators with unimpeachable ethics. Next time there will be "institution building" before privatizations (to use the post-Russia parlance). But calling for law and order after the profits have all been moved offshore is really just a way of legalizing the theft ex post facto, much as the European colonizers locked in their land grabs with treaties. Lawlessness on the frontier, as Adam Smith understood, is not the problem but the point, as much a part of the game as the contrite hand-wringing and the pledges to do better next time.

I can't help remembering the many instances detailed by the late, great Howard Zinn in his People's History of the United States, of European (and later European-American) colonizers' land grabs, forcible displacements, uncalled‑for physical abuse and gradual but relentless extermination of the continent's First Peoples. It seems we haven't changed very much since our colonial days. [/sigh]

Naomi Klein Speaks To Meeting In Vatican Re: Climate Change

Here. Scroll down to the middle of the page for a video of a meeting on July 1 among five people convened by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, or watch the same video on YouTube. Klein's main presentation starts at around 39:25 into the video. Most of the council members speak Italian; Klein's presentation and occasional comments are in English.

It is good to see that the Catholic Church recognizes its considerable responsibility to communicate with people of all faiths (or no faith at all) on the matter of climate change. Either everybody starts talking to everybody else, or humankind may well not survive. Yes, it's that important.

Right-Wing Ideology A ‘Shape-Shifter’ — Naomi Klein

In my ongoing (and probably never-ending) effort to ingest the complete works of Naomi Klein, more or less in reverse order (I finished reading This Changes Everything last month), I have begun the formidable task of absorbing The Shock Doctrine, Klein's work on how some governments, many corporations and some leaders both corporate and governmental leverage the public's response to major disasters... acts of terror, natural disasters such as storms or earthquakes, unconventional changes of government, etc. ... to exercise, even in a democracy, a far greater degree of executive and corporate control than previously possible. Klein's term for it is "disaster capitalism," and even a couple dozen pages into the book she makes a compelling case not only for the existence of such a phenomenon but also that the US (among many other nations) is experiencing it, from no later than 2001 forward, possibly from as early as the mid-20^th century.

What captured my attention at the moment was her observation about how the terminology changes to obscure what is really being done to us, and to the citizens of other nations (p. 14-15, first [hardcover] edition, 2007):

Naomi Klein

In the attempt to relate the history of the ideological crusade that has culminated in the radical privatization of war and disaster, one problem recurs: the ideology is a shape-shifter, forever changing its name and switching identities. [Milton] Friedman called himself a "liberal," but his U.S. followers, who associated liberals with high taxes and hippies, tended to identify as "conservatives," "classical economists," "free marketers," and, later, as believers in "Reaganomics" or "laissez-faire." In most of the world, their orthodoxy is known as "neoliberalism," but it is often called "free trade" or simply "globalization." Only since the mid-nineties has the intellectual movement, led by the right-wing think tanks with which Friedman had long associations — Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute — called itself "neoconservative," a worldview that has harnessed the full force of the U.S. military machine in the service of a corporate agenda.

The ideology I grew up with at least through childhood and part of adolescence was unmistakably "liberal," no bloody "neo-" prepended, a direct descendant of the political and economic philosophies of FDR, JFK and (in some matters) LBJ. No shape-shifter I! May I add a cross-lingual pun to the terms listed in the previous paragraph: "laissez‑unfaire"?

Klein's book looks likely to prove a satisfying if massive read. Take a look, at least; it should be in your public library, now that it is no longer her most recently published book. Or do an excellent activist-writer a favor and buy it; we need to encourage such people to dedicate themselves to the serious issues of our day.

♫ Once... I Had... A Secret Law... ♫The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Environment

NOT the logo, but should be...

If I have been absent from the blog a lot, it is because I've been reading Naomi Klein's prizewinning book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. The book is utterly essential reading for anyone who calls him- or herself an environmentalist, but I'd be the last to deny it is challenging reading on several levels. Especially on point regarding the environmental consequences of the TPP are two chapters: chapter 9, Blockadia: The New Climate Warriors; and chapter 10, Love Will Save This Place: Democracy, Divestment and the Wins So Far. It may be possible to read these chapters independently without starting at the beginning of the book; I'm not sure because I so strongly feel you should read the entire book.

Leaders of TPP member states
(courtesy Wikipedia))

Reading the chapters led me to pursue more information on TPP on the web. Goodness knows there's both a lot of it, and not enough of it: the damned thing is being written in secret, from the public of the involved nations and (in America) from Congress, by 600 people who might politely be called corporate lobbyists... no environmentalists involved. But someone leaked an early version of specifically the environmental section of the draft, WikiLeaks published it in January 2014, and a team assembled from Sierra Club (SC), World Wildlife Federation (WWF) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published an analysis (.pdf), also in January 2014. This is surely not the final version, but it does include a comparison of two earlier versions of the environmental chapter. Believe me, it isn't pretty!

For background, you might want to read about the two decades of NAFTA, the only major trade agreement in town at the moment, and see how that has worked out. Back to TPP, here's a recent TechDirt article of possible interest, mostly about how the US thinks it can get around TPP's provisions... yes, the ones for which no one has been permitted to know the text... and an op‑ed by Sarah Rose at SFGate urging that TPP not be fast-tracked.

The whole thing sucks little green dog dicks. And I doubt we can stop it; TPTB have shown little interest in what the public thinks in any nation involved. But we have to try: democracy already means little enough, and IMO we are obliged to give it some help.

Owen Jones Interviews Naomi Klein On This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

Naomi Klein

Here is the interview. It begins with a presentation by Klein of the essentials of the book, and concludes with a Q-and-A session driven by Jones. I am increasingly convinced that Klein is one of the dozen most articulate people (journalists, scholars, activists... choose your own term for her) alive today; the result is not nearly as subjectively interminable as its 1½-hour length might suggest. And unless you are a professional in some environment-related field, I can pretty much guarantee you that you will learn something.

Once you have viewed the interview, please find and read the book. The further into the book I read, the more I am convinced it is one of the essential books of our time. (One reviewer compared its impact to that of Silent Spring; most of you are probably too young to have encountered it when it was new, but I agree This Changes Everything is comparably powerful and, one can hope, influential.

Can't afford to run out and buy a copy? Public libraries seem to have it, though demand is high and you may have to queue up. Or you can try Amazon; several of their many affiliate bookstores offer quite inexpensive used copies... my experience on the one in my hand is that "Used - Like New" meant exactly that. And of course fans of e-books can find one, probably at a good price. (I don't have an e-reader.)

(Once again, the YouTube video is one of those restricted to being visible only through its YouTube page; sorry about the additional click.)

Naomi Klein On Oil Prices, Fossil Fuel Divestment, Better Climate Movement

Some of you know that my admiration for Naomi Klein is such that when my attempt to place a hold at Houston Public Library on her newest book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, failed, I actually promptly purchased the book, far out of my planned sequence of books to buy. Knowing that, it should hardly surprise you that I found an interview of Klein by May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, at a conference on divestment as an activist tactic, to be well worth reading. The interview is in three parts, dealing with oil prices, how to build a better climate movement, and fossil fuel divestment.

And if any old geezer (like me) says "they don't make activists like they used to," point them to Ms. Klein as an example: no, they don't make 'em like they used to; they make 'em better.